IMSA: Dalziel dazzles in qualifying at Road America

Ryan Dalziel produced one of the finest laps of his career to grab pole position for tomorrow’s Continental Tire Road Race Showcase. Throughout TUDOR Championshp practice at Road America, the best of the Daytona Prototypes appeared to have a comfortable edge over their Le Mans Prototype rivals but, when it counted, Extreme Speed Motorsport’s ace was able to produce a 1min55.166sec lap, to beat Richard Westbrook’s Spirit of Daytona Corvette DP by over 0.3sec.

Just to put the No. 1 HPD ARX-03b’s lap into perspective, that was 0.85sec quicker than OAK Racing’s Morgan-Nissan LMP car, fourth-quick in the hands of Olivier Pla, and Dalziel was an amazing 1.15sec faster than his teammate, Johannes van Overbeek, who will start sixth.

Westbrook, for his part, was almost half a second clear of one of the pole-contending favorites, Christian Fittipaldi in Action Express Racing’s similar Corvette DP, while Ricky Taylor was fifth in the Wayne Taylor Racing ’Vette.

The PC class provided an interesting result as Bruno Junqueira pulled the proverbial rabbit from a hat to edge his RSR teammate Jack Hawksworth for fastest time, reversing the trend seen so far this weekend. Their private battle lifted them a half-second clear of their nearest opposition, which was again the 8Star Motorsports ORECA of Luis Diaz, who beat Renger Van Der Zande (Starworks) down to fourth.

Jonathan Edwards proved his pace in third practice had been no fluke, as he shaded the Dodge SRT Viper GTS-Rs with an excellent lap of 2min03.747sec in his RLLRacing BMW Z4 GTE, to grab pole in the GT Le Mans category. He was just 0.066sec quicker than Jonathan Bomarito in the No. 93 Viper, who in turn had one-tenth over his teammate Marc Goossens. Fourth was the second BMW, qualified by Bill Auberlen.

It wouldn’t be rude to say the Bimmers and Vipers were in a class of their own over a flying lap of Road America because the fifth-placed car, the Porsche 911 of Patrick Long, was almost six-tenths behind. Sixth went to Oliver Gavin, the No. 4 Corvette C7.R having the edge over its No. 3 stablemate, a rare occurrence in 2014.

In GT Daytona, it was James Davison who laid down the fastest time, sending the TRG-AMR Aston Martin Vantage V12 to the top of the charts with an impressive 2min09.479, two-tenths clear of Dane Cameron’s Turner Motorsport BMW Z4. As ever, it seems, it was in close proximity to the Viper Exchange Dodge Viper GT3-R of Jeroen Bleekemolen, who was trailing by a mere 0.052sec.

GTD positions 4 through 8 were filled by a phalanx of Porsche 911 GT Americas, led by Mario Farnbacher in the Team Seattle/Alex Job Racing No. 23. A slightly disappointing ninth was Townsend Bell in the AIM Autosport Ferrari 458, although to be fair, he was less than 0.9sec off Davison’s top time.